2006-06-18

At the rehearsal dinner last night, I learned two things. First, I was going to video tape the wedding. And second, I was on cream puff duty.

Let me explain.

Than Brothers is a local chain of awesome Pho shops. Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup, and is common throughout Seattle. It’s typically a hot beef broth with rice noodles, herbs, spices, and beef. Typically they add thin, raw slices of beef that actually cook in the broth on the way to the table.

Pho is great for several reasons. It’s simple. It’s easy to order – just choose your size and type of meet. It’s cheap. It’s filling. And it has an amazingly complex and rich flavor.

And few things could be better on a chilly and damp Autumn Seattle afternoon than a nice, warm bowl of soup. Add a Vietnamese coffee, and you can’t help but smile.

Than Brothers has multiple locations throughout the area. When customers sit down at a table, the waiter immediately brings over a plate of cream puffs to start the meal. Then he takes the order.

Since the soup is really coming from a giant pot in the back, it it on the table right when the customers a re licking the last bit of cream off their fingers.

This brings me to cream puff duty.

Instead of a wedding cake, Andy and Tricia opted to have creampuffs. There are a couple of advantages to this. Cream puffs are dirt cheap, unlike a wedding cake. And they’re original. Years from now, relatives will still talk about the tasty cream puffs. They would have forgotten all about the cake by the next day. The cream puffs are tasty. And did I mention they are cheap?

So the bride told me about cream puff duty at the rehearsal dinner Friday night. After I finished video taping the wedding in downtown Seattle, I needed to run out to the car, drive to Than Brothers in Ballard, pick up 300 cream puffs, and then take them over to the reception at Daybreak Star.

Later in the evening, she reminded me.

As I headed to the buffet, the groom asked, “Did Tricia tell you about the cream puffs?” I assured him I was on it.

Some one else mentioned it, too.

The morning of the wedding, another reminder about the cream puffs surfaced. I was well aware at this point that the day was all about the cream puffs. If I did nothing else this day, I had to get the cream puffs. Nothing was going to stand in my way.

No street fair, baseball game, open draw bridge, police activity, or a act of war would get between me and my cream puffs. If I needed to enlist the support of Captain Picard himself, I was going to get those cream puffs.

At some point I though maybe I should call the bride’s cell phone , say I was at Ikea but they had no record of her order for 300 Swedish meatballs. But then I realized no one would think that was funny except for me and that when I went home later in the evening it would likely be with my head in a box.

Have you ever wonders what 300 cream puffs looks like? I’ll show you.

When I picked up the cream puffs, the waiter commented that there were a lot. I said it was for a wedding.

At that point he congratulated me on my wedding and wished me and my new spouse well.

I was going to correct him, but given his limited English, and the fact that our entire relationship would last less than four minutes, I decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.